"Imagine a person ... coming across this old relic of a spacecraft, which is what this beautiful spacecraft Phoenix will be in a few hundred years," Alexander said, adding that they should find the DVD attach with Velcro to Phoenix. "What he or she will hold in their hands is a message from our world to theirs."

Phoenix launched at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (0926:34 GMT) atop a Delta 2 rocket to begin a nearly 10-month spaceflight to the Arctic Circle of Mars near the planet's north pole. The probe carries a trench-digging robotic arm and other instruments to sample martian soil and ice to study its chemical makeup, as well as help scientists determine whether the region once supported conditions in which life might exist.

The CD contains 161 novels and stories, 63 pieces of artwork and four radio broadcasts related to Mars, totaling 1.43 gigabytes of data.

Included in the works are H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds," Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" and even Thomas Disch's "The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars."